Credit: Pickawood on Unsplash.

Smartpay has launched interest-free Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) service for credit card users in Japan.

The firm aims to solve consumer payment issues and enhance merchant conversion rates in the country where e-commerce cart abandonment rate is said to be over 80%.

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Smartpay’s fully automated instalment payment solution allows users to pay for their purchases in equal instalments over eight weeks. The service carries no sign-up fees, interest fees, settlement fees, or late charges.

According to the company, consumers will be able to checkout within ten seconds.

Smartpay co-founder Sam Ahmed commented: “Our team has been passionate about Japan and its e-commerce journey for many years. We are seeing more consumers enjoying purchasing online and we’d like to help connect these consumers to the merchants in a more efficient manner.”

As part of its expansion, Smartpay plans to offer a free e-commerce training for 10,000 Japanese merchants to help them drive onsite conversion.

Smartpay country manager Naoya Otsubo said: “Smartpay recognises the anxiety of merchants in Japan will cause some retailers to potentially invest in the wrong areas.

“We believe that we can help merchants increase online sales conversions and revenue by 10 to 20% without having to invest in costly advertising or infrastructure builds.”

Launched in June this year, Smartpay is backed SMBC Venture Capital and Global Founders Capital.

Apple Pay and Google Pay are also integrated into the Smartpay platform to benefit small and medium sized merchants.

In September this year, PayPal agreed to acquire Japanese BNPL services provider Paidy for nearly JPY300bn ($2.7bn).